The Land of Women
by ArentYouSophiaLoren-8887
Summary: It's the women in Fitz's life that have made the most impact on him. Companion piece to my story "Shame" & dedicated to fellow Fitzy-Boy enthusiast, Lady Azura.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you like this newest fic. As much as I love my Eclare fix, I was kind of getting bored of all the Eclare Christmassy goodness that was going around, so I decided to write something a little different. I know it's probably not going to be canon as of a few months from now, but for now, we have no idea what's happening to Fitz, so what I say goes. **

**I dedicate this to Lady Azura, whose love of Fitzy-Boy knows no bounds. Seriously, guys, read her fic "Broken Glass". It's just terrific. One of the few stories I have on Story Alert, and one of my favorites in Degrassi fanfiction. I also recommend "Playing With Fire" and "Monster", which are great insights into the person I believe that Fitz is- an insecure, troubled boy whose been dealt a few bad hands in life, and it made him a little mean.**

**In this fic, I took the liberty of using her OCs Abigail and Phil, which I hope she will not take offense to. I tried to stay as true to her writing of these characters as I possibly could. I also feature the character of Megan Fitzgerald, an OC of mine who is featured as a main character in my other Fitz-centric story, "Shame".**

**I don't own Degrassi, but I do own my OCs, so don't use them.**

**And don't use Abigail and Phil, either, because they belong to Lady Azura. I hope she enjoys this fic so much that she doesn't mind the temporary high-jacking of her OCs. =)**

**I.**

His mother was the only person who was ever there for him, and the only person he ever trusted entirely.

She was seventeen when she had him- all alone in the hospital, by the way, without any parents or family or even the baby's own father. No, that would be too much to hope for. Her parents were too busy saying rosaries and Hail Marys to beg the Heavenly Father's forgiveness for having such a sinful daughter- after they had kicked her out of the house and refused to have anything to do with her, of course.

And the baby's father? Well, let's just say that he had better things to do- like work on his muscle cars and get stoned in the basement bedroom at his parents' house- than be present at the birth of his firstborn son.

All throughout his life, she's worked her ass off for the two of them. For him. She could have aborted him, or given him to some nice rich old couple who were already pushing the nursing home by the time he graduated high school, or shit, even tossed him in a dumpster as soon as he popped out. But no- she kept him and raised him after being knocked up at seventeen years old, and was the best mother that he could ever have had. She worked two, three jobs, just to keep a roof over their heads and clothes on his back.

Just for him, his mother gave up her entire life. And not only that, but he made her life extra hard by being just a rotten little shit- because that's what he knows he is, honestly. A terrible, horrible, soulless little bastard.

He's made her life so hard.

So while Fitz would never admit how much he loves her, he does- more than he could even express, even if he was the type to try.

**II.**

Even after his mother gets married, she's still the only person he loves.

His stepfather? Yeah, right. As if _Phil _could EVER be "Daddy" material. No, he's too busy smacking Fitz one way and down the other to ever try and pull out some of that father-son bullshit that they always show on those AT&T commercials.

Not that his mother knows about that, anyway. Because although his stepfather has spent the better part of his marriage to his mother smacking around her son, Fitz has never seen him raise a hand to his mother in any way, and rarely ever raises his voice. He'll sit in his armchair all day long drinking beer and watching whatever trash cable they can get with their shitty television, complaining that it's not his fault he doesn't have a job, but as far as her son can tell (and he looks hard), the only pain he's ever caused Abigail Fitzgerald is the kind in her ass.

And Fitz always grew up scared of the thought of what might happen if that pain became a little less metaphorical.

So as much as he hated his stepfather, he put up with Phil's fists, if it meant that the man would never touch his mother like that.

Honestly, it was bad enough listening to him fuck her.

**III.**

Some few odd weeks after Phil takes off with the case of beer he had in the fridge and this month's rent money, his mother finds out she's pregnant. For awhile she talks about the possibility of Phil coming back, but they both know she's full of shit. He's never coming back, he got what he wanted from her, and now he's off to find some other woman whose younger, thinner, and doesn't have baggage to deal with.

Besides, they wouldn't even know where to begin looking, if either of them had the slightest interest in finding out where he went.

A few months later, his little sister Megan is born, and while Fitz doesn't really like her all that much- what's there to like about an ugly little brat who always smells like shit and cries nonstop?- he has to admit that as much as he used to wish for a Daddy when he was a very little boy, he is glad that Phil is long gone by the time Megan's here.

Because while he'd never admit it, he couldn't stand the thought of Phil- or anyone else, for that matter- ever raising a hand to her.

I mean, how could anyone ever hit a kid, much less some puny little _baby?_

What did they ever do to you?

**IV.**

Later, though, he would be surprised at how much Megan would grow on him.

Sure, she was annoying and smelly, but she made him feel…well, _good_.

And not in the way that getting drunk or stoned or having sex with some slut at the Ravine made him feel good.

No, this was the crazy thing. Megan just made him feel good by being _him._ With her, all he had to do was make some silly face, or make a farting noise with his hands, or just stick his tongue out at her, and she'd crack up laughing like he was Adam Sandler or something. She followed him around everywhere, and as much as it irritated him, he secretly liked the attention.

Megan was the only person who ever liked him for him- nothing more, nothing less.

**V.**

As soon as he got out of prison, he would spend a lot of his time around the house, not really sure what to do with himself.

It was hard for him to fall asleep. As weird as it was, he was used to falling asleep in a jail cell where the lights are always on and there is noise 24/7, so when he returned home, it was a bit of a reality shock to find out that his apartment was silent after 9 PM, and that all the lights were turned off.

Sometimes, he would lie awake for hours in his bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers. Other nights he would sit on the fire escape right outside, smoking a cigarette he stole out of his mom's purse and just watching the sky- something he hadn't seen all those godforsaken months he was locked inside that hellhole.

Then there are the times when he tiptoes down the hallway, and as quietly as the shadow he casts in the dim light, he slips into his mother's bedroom and watches her and Megan sleep.

His mother sleeps hard, and she should- she works hard enough. She sleeps all sprawled out in the bed she once shared with Phil, the one right across the wall from him. When Phil was still living with them, Fitz could hear every noise they made together in this bed- every spring in the mattress, every bang of the headboard, every pant his mother made while that pig of a husband worked his way over her and called, "fuck, yeah, baby, fuck, harder, that's it, fuck, ahhh, fuck, baby…"

Jesus Christ, did he think they were auditioning for the Oscars of porn?

Just the memory of it is enough to make dream of his former stepfather walking through the door, and this time, Fitz would give him a piece of his motherfucking mind. He wasn't the small child cowering in the kitchen corner, folded into himself like a goddam dishrag anymore.

_You're the man of the house, Mark. My man, and the only man I need. Got it, handsome? _

His mother had told him that all the time when he was a little boy:

_You're the man of the house._

Right.

Because look at him now. A high school dropout. An ex-felon. A parolee. A thug. A nobody. Just another loser, doomed to living off of food stamps and welfare and other humiliating hand-outs. No pride, no dignity, no self-respect. No life, except one doomed to being a bug on a windshield for the rest of his days.

All that work his mother had done, putting in almost 80 hours a week from her three different jobs, raising two kids solo as a high school dropout making minimum wage.

And for what? So her son could brag about the quality of the food at Williamsburg Correctional Facility? So he could have the opportunity to write, on every single job application he would ever fill out for the rest of his life, the name and number of his parole officer? So he could work minimum wage jobs for the rest of his life, without a high school diploma?

Then there was Megan.

Smelly, yowling, sweet little Megan. His baby sister. Old enough to think he was the greatest person ever in the world, but young enough to be totally ignorant as to what a fuck-up and waste of human existence he was.

There were times when he would stand by her crib for hours, just watching her. Her fingers curling and uncurling in her sleep like a sea anemone, drool leaking from her open mouth onto the mattress, that tattered green blanket with the ducks on it that she carried EVERYWHERE and would go apeshit if she was without for, oh, half a millisecond. Her warm, still, chubby baby body, so sure and protected and vulnerable in her sleep, and her face so peaceful and innocent that it makes him feel sick.

Sick with everything- his life, his problems, his failures, and most of all, sick to death of himself.

They deserved a whole lot more than him.

It was nights like these when his thoughts would very sanely turn to the gun that his mother kept in her underwear drawer.

**VI.**

He never consciously made a plan for himself- he'll kill himself when the snow starts to melt, or the first of the month, or anything like that. It was more like an afterthought; if he's going to be this way for the rest of his life, than it really isn't worth living.

So why bother living it at all?

One night got particularly bad for him. His mother was working late and Megan was with him, watching Dora the Explorer on TV. While she was totally absorbed in listening to Dora ask her to point out Swiper the Fox, he took the bottle of gin out of his mother's cabinet and poured it straight.

He didn't mean to, but before he knew it he'd downed nearly half the thing, and by the time Megan fell asleep midway through Dora's little adventure through the jungle, he was sitting on his bed in the darkness of his bedroom, the bottle of gin in one hand and the gun resting in his lap.

Like he said- Fitz never made an actual plan to kill himself. He figured that he'd died a long time ago, and now he was just a zombie, sleepwalking through life.

So what was the point of going through the motions, if you were already dead?

His mind completely blank, he put the bottle down, picked up the gun, put it in his mouth.

And put his hand on the trigger.

**VI.**

If you asked Fitz today, he couldn't tell you why he didn't just pull the damn thing, letting his brains spew all over the thin, dingy wall of his bedroom.

Because, really, he has no idea why he didn't do it.

No, he didn't have an epiphany. An _It's A Wonderful Life_ moment where he realized that yes, life is indeed worth living.

No, he didn't break down and have a Jesus moment, one that had him screaming "I see the light!" while Della Reese glowed and praised God in the background.

And no, there wasn't an emotional scene where he just simply broke down crying, begging for mercy, relief, redemption, hope…_something._

He just heard Megan calling his name- "MOK! MOK!", because that was all she could manage at her age- and when she did, he simply took the gun out of his mouth and put it back on his bed alongside the bottle, walking calmly and steadily into the room where his sister was and sitting next to her, watching Dora the Explorer as if nothing had ever happened.

**VII.**

Although he hated what a fucking cliché it sounded like, his time in prison, coupled with that night with his mother's gun, really made him wake up and get his shit together. Not all at once, but piece by piece; it's like he's a human jigsaw puzzle being put together in an old folks home by World War II veterans with cataracts- agonizingly slow, but still getting done.

While he was doing his time, he found his life had righted itself in little ways. He didn't become all Jesus-y and crap, but he DID finally dry out. He couldn't drink, so he had to sober up. He couldn't do anything bad, so he stayed out of trouble. He couldn't be a bully, because he was up against men who were much bigger and badder and more terrifying- and had done worse- than Fitz had ever done in his life. Sure, he was in a medium-security prison, so he wasn't living with murderers and child rapists and the like, but he was still with pretty scary people in general.

While he was on parole, he completed his GED program. Despite how pointless he thought everything was, he had no choice but to do it- he had nothing but time on his hands, and it was so freaking BORING doing nothing that this was a way to distract him from being stuck.

When his GED was completed and he finally had his diploma, his parole officer got him a job at a grocery store. He hated it, but realized that there were things FAR worse in life than being a bag boy at the A&P.

So while he didn't really believe in all that soul-searching, I'm-gonna-turn-my-life-around kinda crap, he DID clean his act up.

**VIII.**

Two years after he got out of jail, a cop showed up at his front door, and for the first time he can remember, it had nothing to do with him.

Instead, it was about Phil.

Apparently, he'd been killed in a car accident on some godforsaken highway in the middle of BFE. She was listed as the emergency contact and the next of kin, and since they weren't ever technically divorced, she was still entitled to death benefits.

He remembered his mother telling the man thank you, and to get the hell off of her porch.

He didn't want her to accept the money. After all, they hadn't heard from Phil in over three years. Since he left, he never called, sent money, or showed the slightest interest in wanting to be a father to his daughter. Even though it wasn't official until recently, he had been dead to them for a long time.

In the end, though, she had taken it. They needed the money, point blank, and money was money, even if it was what Fitz called "blood money".

"Besides," she had pointed out, "think of it as one thing that Phil actually did for us that was good."

"Yeah," he'd snorted back. "Dying. The only thing that bastard ever did right by us. You're right, Mom. Dying was the best fucking thing he could have ever done for his wife. For his own child. What a guy."

She'd glared at him, looking like she was ready to slap him across the face, but instead just withered like a dried-up flower.

"You know," she'd said, and Fitz had been startled to see tears forming in her eyes as her voice wavered, "you can really be so hateful sometimes, Mark."

"Ma," he'd said, his voice softening, "I'm sorry, alright? Just don't see why we have to take this. Phil gave us shit for almost ten years and then walked away from you and his own kid."

"He was your stepfather, Mark. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Yeah. It means that he owes me nothing. And I don't owe him anything, either. He's not my father. He couldn't tell me what to do with my life when he was here, and now that he's dead, I don't need anything from him."

He never found out if his mother accepted the money or not. All he knows is that month, he put in his half of the money they owed for rent and utilities, and the bill collectors didn't call their place for a couple months after that.

**IX.**

One night, he's dicking around on Facerange- something he doesn't really do much, but he's off of work for the day and is bored as hell stuck inside during a January snowstorm- and then he sees something that nearly gives him the shock of his life.

A photo pops up on somebody's wall feed, and it takes him a full minute of staring in open-mouthed shock to realize that he's looking at Clare Edwards.

It takes him so long to realize her, since he hasn't seen her since Vegas night, nearly three years ago. Her hair is longer, pulled away from her face, which is more lined and worn than he remembers, and definitely less filled out.

Plus, there's something in her eyes that's definitely changed. That light that he saw in her, that open-hearted sweetness and innocent gleam in her eyes has dimmed, and there's something a little more dull there, more jaded and…older.

Plus, she's, like, humongously pregnant- really in the throes of "I could really drop this kind any day now" kind of pregnant- with one ringless hand resting on her enormous belly, as the other is swung around Eli Goldsworthy's shoulder.

_Eli Goldsworthy's._

He can't believe it. He can't fucking believe it.

Miss Purity Ring Edwards, Miss Friendship Club and Chastity Belt and Little Miss Innocent. Clare _fucking _Edwards, one-half of the reason his life was the way it was, while the other smirked that _infuriating_ smirk of his up at him, one hand on Clare's waist and the other pressed up against the huge baby bump.

He just couldn't get over it. The whole thing. The fact that she had this big belly, with a baby inside, and that it was, of all people's, _Emo Boy's_. After everything, all the shit that had gone down on Vegas Night and the past three years that had gone by, they were _still_ together.

But what _really_ got under his skin was the look on Emo-Boy's face. It was that same smirk that Fitz had seen a million times. It was the same one he'd gotten when Eli had given him his fake ID; the same one he'd given him when he'd picked that fight with him outside the convenience store; the same look he'd given him when he'd faced him in the hallway after he'd gotten out of his meeting with the judge; the same one that Fitz had seen right before he drank the poisoned cup on Vegas Night.

It was a look that clearly said, "I win."

And from the look on his face as he put his hand over Clare's belly, huge and stretched with their baby, Fitz just _knew_ who'd really won their feud.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Part II of Fitzy-Boy's story. **

**I don't own Degrassi, but I do own my OCs. Abigail and Phil are Lady Azura's, to whom this story is dedicated, so don't use them without her permission.**

**REVIEW.**

**X.**

He met his future wife, Lia Kinney, in a bar, of all places.

She was a new waitress in at the bar where his mother worked, tending the bar and serving drinks to the grizzled mill workers and old town drunks who don't even try to hide the fact that they're staring directly down her shirt.

In the beginning, most of the old bastards try to make a move to grope her ass- which Fitz has to say, is pretty great- but she puts a stop to that almost immediately.

That makes him stand up and take notice. He's seen plenty of pretty girls in his life, but this new girl is the first one who isn't just another skank like the kind from the Ravine.

Oddly enough, she reminds him of a cross between Bianca and Clare Edwards.

She's got this softness to her that originally drew him to Clare so much- these big blue eyes, auburn curls, flawless white skin, this cute smattering of freckles across her face, and this tight little body that Fitz can tell is soft in all the right places.

But what's really interesting about this girl is that she's got this no-bullshit attitude to her that you wouldn't think she could possess, with a soft little body like that. She's got a sharpness to her eyes that reminds him so distinctly of Bianca, and this coltish, powerful stride that distinctly means "no messing with me".

At first, he's just at the bar because of carpool necessities. He's getting off his night shift at the grocery store, so he heads over and sits at the bar for an hour or so until his mother finishes her shift. After a few weeks of this Lia girl working there, though, he starts going to the bar on the nights that he doesn't have to work, just to try and catch a glimpse of her.

He tries to be as discreet as possible- sitting at a table in the corner, only glancing up every few seconds, never making direct eye contact with her

(God, he feels like SUCH a chick doing this, like some fourteen-year-old spying on a senior football star from across the high school cafeteria)

and basically pretending like this girl is just another nobody in this crummy bar- albeit one with a very sweet ass and great body.

But one night, his plan completely goes south when she walks past his table and says, "so, are you just gonna sit here and stare at my ass all night?"

He looks up at her, mouth open, not sure how to respond. Is that a warning? Or an invitation?

"Other guys," she continued, as if this was just some casual conversation, "come in here and stare at my ass, but at least they make conversation. So are you going to be polite? Or just sit there and be creepy?"

**XI.**

She's a rodeo queen.

And a college girl, though she ended up dropping out because, as she puts it, "I partied too hard".

Lia grew up in Texas, already a bona fide rodeo champ at a time in her life when the biggest accomplishment in Fitz's life was getting busted for smoking weed in the back of Johnny DiMarco's car with him, Bruce, and that Derek kid. Spent the time that Fitz spent hooking up in vans and racking up marks on his juvie record winning national titles and getting scholarship offers from all of these big-name colleges.

By the time he was arrested for the knife incident, Lia had already gotten early admittance and a full-ride scholarship, and had two national titles under her belt for barrel racing.

And now here she is- a bartender, working in the same rundown shithole his mother waitressed at, serving whiskey shots to the town drunks.

As different as they are, both of their lives have come to a grinding halt, and a lot of it is due to their own stupidity.

**XII.**

He's been with more than his share of girls, but Lia's the only one he can ever rightfully say that he's been with because he really wanted to.

When he's with her, he feels…alive. And not the kind of thrill he got from pummeling some niner to the dust back at Degrassi, or when he was doing some delinquent shit with the guys from the Ravine. It's the kind of thrill that fills him up, instead of making him feel empty. It makes him feel like he's being given something, instead of something being taken away. It's filling him up, as opposed to taking away part of him when it's over.

The part that really gets him, though, is how he doesn't care how it makes him feel. He loves the feeling he gets from this.

Back when he was ragging on DiMarco and Guthrie for being lovesick and pussy-whipped, he could never have imagined what it felt like to wake up with Lia's head on his shoulder and her curls spread across his chest, all of that stubbornness that's hardened his heart for years like plaster mold melting away like snow, like it's hardly anything at all.

What feels best is when he's asleep with her, curled beside her body in their bed, warm and soft and malleable as molding putty.

All those ridiculous love clichés that make him want to barf whenever he hears them; they don't even come close to the way it feels to feel Lia breathing against him.

_In, out, in, out, in, out, in, and out. _

A steady, unbreakable rhythm, like ocean waves and the thud of a bass beat and a heartbeat, a metronome under warm skin all at once.

With her, he feels something that he's never felt in his entire life.

_Whole._

**XIII.**

He knows he's the one for her when, two weeks after birthing their son, she's back on a horse.

She's wearing one of those forward-facing contraptions that straps their son to her chest, asleep in his little papoose. Despite the fact that they're only walking in a circle, that the nag is on a lead line, that the thing is being lead around like a pony ride at a county fair, it still makes him want to barf, seeing her with the baby up on that gigantic beast.

Although he's proud of what his wife accomplished in her life, he's never liked horses. He's scared of them, and from where he sees, rightfully so. Those things, they're gigantic, and they've got a mind of their own. To him, it's like turning loose an 18-wheeler filled with toxic chemicals during rush hour traffic without a driver and the emergency break turned off. So as much as Lia tries to talk to him about "communicating" with them and "understanding the horse", he thinks he'd understand Yiddish before figuring out what the hell a flea-bitten gluepot is thinking.

Besides, the animal's got 1500 pounds on his wife's 121. So, really, tell Fitz whose in charge. It's like mating a female Chihuahua with a Great Dane on steroids.

"Give me Kyle," he told her, putting up his hands and reaching.

"Mark," she said in exasperation

_(and she's the only other person, other than his mother and Megan, whom he allows to call him Mark instead of just Fitz)_

"He's fine. See? We're walking. Kyle's fine. He's asleep. He could care less."

"Well, _I_ care. Give me the baby."

"Oh, come on…"

"Lia, give me the baby."

"You need to chill the fuck out, alright?"

"Lia, I don't care. Give me the baby."

"Jesus." She rolled her eyes, but did hand him the baby, and then motioned for the guy leading the horse to let go.

Fitz held Kyle and watched as his wife pushed the horse into a trot, then a canter, then a full gallop, circling the paddock once, twice, three times, over and over again, lapping the ring in a singular, fluid motion.

**XIV.**

Only three weeks before his daughter's born, his mother died of lung cancer.

She didn't just die, though, in Fitz's opinion. That is too sanitized and safe a word for what happened to Abigail Fitzgerald. His mother was simply diagnosed, and less than ten months later, she was dead. Poof. Gone. Blink-and-you'll-miss-her. Just like that. Buried in the dirt, like she'd never existed at all.

For the time that she _was_ alive, though, between the diagnosis and her death, she literally wasted away before Fitz's eyes. She couldn't eat, couldn't drink, and towards the end, couldn't even open her eyes. She had always been a slim woman, but once the cancer really took hold, she became a skeleton, looking like those Holocaust pictures he saw in history textbooks in high school.

At the very end, she didn't even recognize him, or Megan. She was so out-of-her-mind on the drugs they were giving her to ease the incredible pain she was feeling that she didn't even realize her son and daughter were standing right next to her bed, watching this banshee that had stolen their mother from them.

She's always been such a tough broad, but now she's nothing but a scared old lady. Hell, she's not even that old- she hasn't even hit fifty yet.

A humiliating, graceless death, fitting for Hitler or a child murderer, Phil or _Eli Goldsworthy_, but the worst sort of punishment for Abigail Rosemary Fitzgerald, a woman who worked her entire goddam life away and got absolutely nothing in return.

Three weeks later, when Taylor was born, he gave her the middle name of Abigail. He had planned when he and Lia got pregnant with Kyle to name him after his mother, but by the time he realized that Kyle was a boy, he decided that was probably a bad idea, anyway. Bad luck, or whatever.

What he meant was, he didn't want his kids to repeat any sort of life like the kind he lived.

But when Taylor came out, he couldn't help but resenting her the slightest bit. He knew that it was completely unfair, and that Taylor was just a defenseless little baby who couldn't even control her movements, much less the grand scheme of life, but still…

He wished she had just come out a little bit earlier, so his mom could see the granddaughter he'd named partly for her.

_(Not that she would have recognized Mark, Lia, Megan, or Kyle. By then, Abigail Fitzgerald was already dead- her body was just being forced to suffer because the universe had no sympathy for anyone, and never handed out breaks for the people that had deserved them their entire lives)_

Life was just _so unbelievably unfair_.

**XV.**

After their mother died, Megan moved in with her boyfriend, a low-life little punk who wasn't too different from the way her father had probably been at that age. Megan was fifteen at the time, and while Fitz does everything he can- from threatening to bribery to practically begging- she rebuffed his efforts to try and get her to move in with him, instead going to live with this little shit.

And because fate is cruel, and life is terrible, almost before he can blink, Megan's pregnant- his little baby sister, his second favorite person in the world, the only family he has left.

Of course, her boyfriend wants nothing to do with her after that. He dumps her, takes off in the middle of the night just like Phil did, and Megan's living in his family room, sleeping on the couch.

When the baby's born, she names her Rosemary Abigail, after their mother.

**XVI.**

He works road crew, and has to admit, he likes it. The hard work. The manual labor. It makes him feel useful in a way that nothing ever had before. Like he's actually accomplishing something. Because once the job is done, there it is- a road, evidence of his labor, something that billions of people will use and not think twice about, but every time he drives over it, he will always remember all the hours he spent laying it down and think, "I made that. It's my work. And it's something that makes a difference."

As silly as it sounded, it gave him purpose, something he hadn't ever experienced before.

Besides, there's something about the routine of it- jumping at the blow of a whistle- that he had to admit gave him comfort.

He spent his entire life trying to buck the system. Trying to shake things up. Building them up, just to watch them burn. Living with no rules. He did it to feel ALIVE, because nothing else ever did. He was sleepwalking through life back then.

But now, he has to admit, it's kind of nice to have someone constantly on his case. It kept him in line, kept him from screwing up. It reminded him of his parole officer, who was always riding his ass about staying in line and getting his life back on track. Somebody who actually gave half a shit.

Besides, he's got a lot more riding on his choices now, with Lia, Kyle, Taylor, Megan, and Rosemary.

**XVII.**

For a kid who spent his entire life running away from any type of responsibility and thought he'd just end up with his worthless ass in jail, the same sorry excuse for a person that he'd always been told he was, there was nothing more surprising to him than the life he was living now, every single day.

His wife is, point blank, the best thing that could ever happen to him. He's living a love he never thought he'd get to, one he doesn't deserve and has no fucking idea how he ever managed to earn.

She's a hard woman, his wife. She's stubborn as he is, got the volatile temper of a true Irishwoman, and doesn't hesitate to put him in line and crack her whip. It irritates the hell out of him, but he can't imagine where he'd be without her.

Despite their frequent disagreements, Lia is the only woman he will ever want, and without a doubt the one he will spend the rest of his life with.

When he falls, her arms catch him.

When he's circling the drain, she keeps him from getting sucked under.

She quiets all the demons in his head, and holds him in the night.

She keeps his crazy sane, and without her, he'd be long gone.

Kyle. His boy. What a typical Irish rogue. Looks just like him, freckles and all. Black Irish, it's called, with the dark hair and green eyes. A little hellraiser, though Fitz is infinitely grateful the kind of hell his son decides to raise falls in line with the more mischievous side, instead of the genuine trouble. He makes good grades, loves to play baseball, and is well on his way to being the first Fitzgerald to go to university.

Wants to be, of all things, a _teacher._

God, is this really his son?

Taylor, his baby, is like Megan all over again. Looks at him like he hangs the moon and stars, and he means that literally- he actually told her that he did that. She's seven years old now, and in that short time, his house has been filled with more pink shit than he ever believed was possible to own. It's like the Pepto-Bismol factory exploded in his house.

Megan graduated high school, something that seems like run-of-the-mill for everyone else but for her is a triple accomplishment: not only did her mother, father, and brother not finish high school on normal time, but she also bounced around from place to place, and on top of all that, had a baby at fifteen. So the fact that she finished at all, especially on time, is a miracle in and of itself.

Nowadays, she goes to the local community college and works at a pizzeria part-time. She still lives with Fitz and his family, but she provides for herself and for Rosemary, without any help from the baby daddy. Rosemary is almost two and is just like one of his own kids, and he and Megan are still close.

He's proud of her. She's determined not to be a fuck-up.

He's not sure what he did to deserve this life, and can't imagine that he _does_ deserve it at all. He doesn't believe in God, or Heaven, or Hell and Satan and crap- he doesn't believe in anything.

But what he does know is that he was given a second chance.

And he knows that this time, he didn't flush it down the drain.


End file.
